OTHER VIEWS. THE READERS HAVE THEIR SAY.

High school follies

January 31, 2004|By Phil Sullivan.

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The state of the Bulls is a testament to the folly of burning high draft picks on high school players. LeBron James being the notable exception, they aren't ready physically or mentally for the NBA. No GM wants to miss the next big thing, so the draft is based on the potential of high-schoolers, underclassmen and foreign players.

Drafting for potential has hurt the quality of play in the NBA and in college. A mediocre DePaul team sent three underclassmen to the NBA in consecutive years. Corey Maggette didn't start at Duke, but the NBA drafted him after his freshman year. Wispy Jared Jeffries has a good tournament and off he goes to the NBA and the Wizards' bench.

College players learn to lead and play in a competitive atmosphere. Have we heard complaints that the Bulls' young players are lacking in these areas? Drafting underclassmen makes sense once they earn some sort of pedigree and have established that they can move to the next level.

Michael Jordan and Carmelo Anthony led their teams to the NCAA championship. Elton Brand took his team to the title game and was pronounced ready for the NBA by Coach K [Mike Krzyzewski], no fan of the underclass draft. Is it a surprise that Kirk Hinrich, a four-year player at Kansas, is the most NBA-ready player the Bulls have drafted recently?

The height of this insanity was when Jerry Krause traded Brand for the draft pick to choose Tyson Chandler. A 20-year-old Rookie of the Year winner who averaged 20 points and 10 rebounds a game traded for a high-schooler whose "career" consisted of dunking over much shorter 16-year-olds in the California suburbs.

Krause stocked arguably the worst team in the NBA with high school players, and the state of the current Bulls is the result. I don't blame the kids for taking the money, but when some of them get traded, as they undoubtedly will, I don't want to hear about the raw deal they got in Chicago. They should try sitting in the stands and watching what passes for NBA basketball.